In the end we went much further than we originally planned to.

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Cath)

Still cold enough here to need a coat on.

We agreed that we needed to get to Barlaston, to be at least on schedule. To go further would make it a long day, as there are places that we didn't want to spend a night. We either had to stop at Barlaston, or we had to keep going to get to Etruria in Stoke-on-Trent. We had a plan for Alan to do an oil change at Barlaston.

 

Unusually David is at the tiller here as we lock through Stone.

The Trent and Mersey canal north of Weston winds through fairly unpopulated countryside with locks well spaced out. The weather was fine, and we made good progress to Stone. At Star Lock, I walked a short distance to the Oatcakes and Milkshakes restaurant, and bought 12 fresh oatcakes.

 

At Meaford Alan worked the locks and Cath steered.

There were no problems working up through Stone, and we changed steerers afterwards - Alan is keen to do more lock working.

 

Flamingo was once a trip boat at Trentham - could this be where its base was?

The oatcakes were heated in a frying pan, with a bit of cheese - delicious. We saved half for tomorrow's lunch.

 

This still makes us chuckle.

We arrived at Barlaston at 2:45, and promptly decided that we would rather keep going - even though we knew that it was at least another 3 hours to Etruria.












 

Not all of the flight up to Etruria is picturesque!

In fact, we arrived on the dot of 6 pm - and decided that we didn't want to stop at Etruria either. It looked like all the long moorings outside the museum had been taken - we might have been able to fit in one, but it wasn't clear without actually spending ages taking Flamingo into the arm. So we set off again for Westport Lake arriving at 7:25.





 

The camera dial was mistakenly moved to one of the special effects........

 

....... but it doesn't seem that inappropriate for these subjects.

It's well worth a longer than usual day to moor up next to this.

The lake is beautiful, so we walked the dogs as the sun was setting, then had dinner, and collapsed into bed. A long day, but we have turned our half a day behind schedule into now being a day in hand.






Weston upon Trent to Westport Lake, Stoke on Trent
Miles 18.2, Locks: 16
Total Miles 99.9, Total Locks: 53